[ewmb]

#1018407

For those of you have had TED can you please elaborate a little on how it felt early in the disease? What did you notice at first that made you realize something was off? I went to new endo yesterday and she asked me about my eyes. I did tell her that my pressure was up two years ago but that last time I went to the eye doctor it had gone back down. That was before I think I was on too much levoxyl. Have lowered the dose and I am hoping that my tired, dry eyes will leave me again. I am feeling like I am constantly squinting. I just had my lenses changed in my bifocals less than a year ago so I hope it’s not a big change in my prescription that is needed.

ewmb

[snelsen]

#1064567

This is my experience, but at no time did any eye doc or myself think anything was wrong. You will see at the end how I was diagnosed with TED. Sorry, it is a bit long.

For about two years or more, I found that my vision was bothering me. Like the glasses needed to be changed YET AGAIN!
I got new rx after new rx, and I still had trouble seeing. The repeated Rx’s in glasses did not "help."
By that I mean that I had to tip my head to the side or back in order to have clarity. At that same time, my eyes got scratchy, thought i was having allergies for the first time, took claritin. Not much difference. The other symptom I had was increasing sensitivity to light, needing sun glasses more often. And my eyes would tear for no reason, then my vision was blurred cause of the tears. I was working as a recovery room nurse, and when we went online, the moniters were up high above the stretchers. I found that if I glanced up, I had double vision of the numbers. I then accomodated to that, by turning my head so that I saw one of everything. STILL BLAMING EVERYTHING ON GLASSES, CAUSE THE ophthamologist did. When I was going to get my sixth $600 pair of glasses, I was walking down the street, suddenly, for the first time,I decided to go to another eye doc about the tearing of my eyes. So I walked in to another eye doc, planning to make an appointment about eyes tearing, and he happened to walk out. He said, "you have thyroid eye disease do you know that?"
I told him why I was there. He said, "I am 99% sure you do. If you are planning to make an appointment, why don’t start now. Go downstairs and get an orbital CT, bring the CD back with you, I’ll take a look." I did, and it was clear that I had TED. (muscles fibrosed, explained why i could not look up comfortably.) He referred me to a neuro-ophthamologist and a pediatric eye doc. The neuro guy did thorough exams, followed me, did visual fields tests frequently with a special machine. The peds eye doc’s assistant tried to help me with prism glasses for my double vision, saw that office about every 2 months, doing measurements for the time that my eyes were not changing anymore.

The doc who diagnosed me held up two fingers on one hand, five on the other. He said, "this is a long haul. expect two years, and the possibility of five surgeries before you can decide you are done with TEd."]

This may be a lot more information that you need right now, but I could not figure out where to begin and end!
Shirley

[ewmb]

#1064568

THANKS Shirley,
I am doing the craning of my neck to see through my not even a year old bifocals. I hate doing computer work. It seems like I can’t focus. I am not having double vision as far as I know. I work in an office with no natural light and that’s awful. I did get some natural spectrum lamps and that helps. I turn off the overhead sometimes. I just feel like my eyes are tired and they seem bloodshot a lot. That may be my allergies and the air conditioning.

I have used drops for dryness for 16 years already since I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. Did your eye pressure go up a lot during the time you were changing lenses? Did you get headaches?

ewmb

[Bobbi]

#1064569

I think the "tired, dry" eyes are more a product of thyroid disease than TED, although I could be wrong. But a lot of us get photophobic and have to use artificial tears, even though our eyes do not protrude. The quality of our tears changes when we have thyroid disease.

Typically, as Shirley mentioned, if there is TED, we lose our ability to focus our eyes in some of our field of vision. There are three (if I remember correctly) pairs of muscles attached to each eye, which move the eyes to look at the world around us. In order to see properly, these six sets of muscles (two eyes, three pairs of muscles per) work together. As the muscles of the eyes thicken and stiffen (become fibrose), some work better than others (they do not all change in the same degree), so we’ll "see" double perhaps when looking in some directions. Or, we’ll have the sense that we cannot focus in some directions, while we can in others.

But depending upon your age, you might be — coincidentally — going through that stage of life, which hits around our 40th year, when our eyes naturally lose their ability to focus on close objects. EVERYBODY goes through this change. It’s why you see so many people "of a certain age" using reading glasses.

The bottom line is to be sure you are going to a good eye doc to figure out what is going on.

[ewmb]

#1064570

I turned 47 yesterday and went through the "old eyes" change around 40 and that’s when I started wearing bifocals. I use an optometrist here locally but probably need to see an opthamologist again sometime again. It just seems weird to me that I want to close my eyes a lot. Could be the muscles changing as you say.

ewmb

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